this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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Because they will eventually understand that they are facing existential threats elsewhere and they don't have the capacity to produce enough ammunition for every front.
There will never be an invasion of the US by its enemies as long as the US has nukes, so that one is ruled out.
The ruling class is indeed facing an existential threat in that the flow of global capital is being stifled as the periphery (including Europe itself) is turning away from the declining US and towards an ascending China.
Now you have thousands of pieces of military equipments that are obsolete, outdated and highly ineffective in war. How would you utilize them? You send them to Ukraine to get them blown up by Russia so your GDP can go up. Every single piece of equipment in Ukraine that is blown up translates into the US GDP going higher. The higher GDP gave the US a stronger currency which then allows it more power to extract from the Global South to entrench its control over the periphery of the empire.
So what is happening in Ukraine today is translating surplus military equipments that were overproduced during the US industrial powerhouse heyday into a fictitious GDP numbers that make the line go up.
That surplus is a deep well but it's not infinite. They have to cut it out eventually, and if your theory is correct then they'll cut the military aid to Ukraine sooner than later because it wouldn't make sense to send them the more modern equipment once all the stockpiled rusty weapons run out.
This is going to take a long time because of the way the equipments slowly trickle in, almost seem like they are deliberately taking their time.
Let’s take HIMARS for example, there are over 600 launchers built. The US had sent 16 launchers to Ukraine, and another 16 promised still slowly being delivered.
Same with M1 Abrams main battle tanks - 31 has been delivered to Ukraine, while there are several thousands left in storage in the US.
The munitions, on the other hand, do get depleted at a much faster rate, but there is no actual plan to replenish these stocks. Because unlike what many people think, America cannot win a military and industrial confrontation. A currency war is the only front where America truly has a chance, and what they’re doing now is translating outdated military and industrial capacity into financial strength.
I still think that the slow trickle of many different types of equipment is mostly about seeing what modern Russian equipment does to them. A big bloody R&D exercise.
When and if the US starts lobbing nukes (entirely possible) the reasoning behind that becomes a whole lot less, particularly for what humanity is left after the pyrrhic victory over YanKKKeestan. And if and when the US balkanizes or enters civil war- if it doesn't wind up nuking its own citizens in the process (also entirely possible) the entire world should see to it that the dreaded settler-imperialist, hegemonic ideology is rooted out in its entirety and support whatever factions might allow that.
Honestly I don't think there can ever be anything even remotely considered peace, unless the entirety of the US and the Anglosphere is de-Nazified (or rather, de-settlerized- not depopulated of whites, but having the entire ideology and even the mentality dealt with akin to the cultural revolution on steroids). Personally I live in an Anglo country as well and that's certainly my take on it, these are the countries that for the past 200~ years have been promoting every evil imaginable all across the globe (not talking about progressive things, those are the rare showings of humanity albeit often repurposed for PR instead), that have been waging war and genocide against indigeneity across the entire globe (taking up the leadership mantle of 500 years of western genocide and barbarism).
American and west European culture will have to be rebuilt and re-examined from the ground up, as the Soviets did (and with the assistance and oversight of the entire world upon the west, there should be no leeway). And American and west European state frameworks and institutions will also have to be rebuilt from the ground up, the rot is simply that deep.
This all sounds simultaneously fatalistic and idealistic- but my expectation is that the Yanks and the imperialist mentality will truly push things to their furthest point before there is any hope of changing course, that the spiral will only further continue, and for who knows how much longer, before finally they reach a breaking point. I hope not, but seeing the sheer pervasiveness and control of the neocons, of neoliberalism, and knowing firsthand how the culture of settlerism is, this is what I'd expect. And when things do reach that point (and if we all still live after, or not) whatever remains of humanity will have to ensure the settler-imperialist world system never develops again.
I'd genuinely like to be proven wrong, to see even the US/collective west with all their flaws disband NATO, ideally even start negotiating with or seek to join BRICS, and accept the end of empire with grace and get to work on resolving their own internal issues through peaceful reform if possible. Of course, we all know just how ridiculous, unprecedented, and structurally impossible any of this would be.
A lot of that ageing equipment costed a lot of tax payer money as well. So they offloaded some of that as well.
And half of them probably don’t work anymore. There have been numerous reports from the Ukrainian side that the Western equipments they received don’t work half the time.
It’s almost like they’re being sent there not to help Ukraine win the war, but to be rid of using Ukrainian lives.
Thats the thing. Ukraine's aircraft capabilities couldn't match Russia's and there was hamstring on bringing more f16 due to several factors. You get the clickbait such as ukraine developing their own cruise missiles (that has too many parts involved for me to believe out the gate) and such but things are looking rough. It was hamstrung to use long range missiles supplied by the US to targets inside Russia because of feara of Russian retaliation. They were in a tough position as it was but you can't even engage the enemy like that